News

Official: Unarmed Suspect Shot In Face While Resisting Drug Search DELTONA - A Deltona man was unarmed when he was shot and killed by a Volusia County deputy who was entering the home Wednesday morning on a narcotics search warrant, an official said.

An anti-drugs lobby group has told the Legislative Assembly that medical marijuana could act as a "Trojan horse" for illegal drug use in the ACT and any change to current laws could prompt an increase in addiction.

Opinions

We were please to see the board of supervisors stay the course when it comes to curtailing the growing of marijuana in Tulare County. The board recently agreed to keep the ordinance in place which greatly restricts the growing of marijuana. It does not completely ban marijuana growing, but narrows down where it can legally be grown.

Letters

Froma Harrop should give more credit to the Rand Paul, RKy., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., bill ("Half a heart on marijuana better than no heart at all," Star-Advertiser, March 21).

To the Editor: "Job Hunting With a Criminal Record" (editorial, March 19) rightly highlights the unjust challenges ex-offenders face in the job market. I applaud ban-the-box laws, which, as you say, "require employers to consider applicants more fully before asking about their criminal history," and we have done that for Delaware state jobs. To reduce the number of people entering the criminal justice system, I'm hopeful that my state will decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Regarding the March 20 Metro article "Bowser weighs in on 'Black America' ": If Americans are troubled by the disparity of income between African Americans and white Americans, one tactic would go a long way to reduce it: Correct the country's racist policies regarding drug crimes. White Americans consume drugs at virtually the same rate as blacks, research shows. Yet black Americans are about twice as likely to be arrested for a drug offense as whites, and they are about four times as likely as white defendants to end up in prison.

Re: "Fed should respect state laws on medical marijuana" [Opinion, March 22]: Not only should our federal government respect state laws on medical marijuana, but marijuana prohibition as a federal policy needs to end. If the goal of marijuana prohibition is to subsidize violent drug cartels, prohibition is a grand success. The drug war distorts supply and demand dynamics so that big money grows on little trees. If the goal is to deter use, marijuana prohibition is a catastrophic failure. The United States has almost double the lifetime rate of marijuana use as the Netherlands where marijuana has been legally available for decades. The criminalization of Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis has no basis in science. The war on marijuana consumers is a failed cultural inquisition, not an evidence-based public health campaign. In California and across the nation, it's time to stop the pointless arrests and instead tax legal marijuana.

Regarding Bill Richardson'=C2=80=C2=99s March 8 op-ed, there is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket legalization. Switzerland'=C2=80=C2=99 s heroin maintenance program has been shown to reduce disease, death and crime by providing addicts with standardized doses in a clinical setting. The success of the Swiss program has inspired heroin maintenance pilot projects in Canada, Germany, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands. If expanded, prescription heroin maintenance would deprive organized crime of a core client base. This would render illegal heroin trafficking unprofitable and spare future generations addiction.